It has long been known in the field of disposable absorbent articles that it is extremely desirable to construct absorptive devices, such as disposable diapers, sanitary napkins, incontinent briefs, bandages, wound dressings, and the like, presenting a soft, silky, cloth-like surface feel to the user to improve wearing comfort and confidence.
One solution to the aforementioned problem has been to utilize a covering or topsheet on the exposed, wearer-contacting layer which comprises a web of formed, apertured thermoplastic film. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,314, issued to Radel et al. on Aug. 3, 1982 discloses a representative formed film of this variety. In order to address consumer concerns with regard to plastic-like appearance and feel, webs of this variety have been developed which include an interconnected structure of fiber-like appearance in the interest of generating a more cloth-like, aesthetically-pleasing appearance. In addition, apertured, formed thermoplastic film webs have been developed which further include microscopic surface texturing (microtexture) and/or microscopic apertures (microapertures) to further enhance the visual and tactile impression of such webs. Representative film webs of this variety are disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,463,045, issued to Ahr et al. on Jul. 31, 1984, 4,629,643, issued Dec. 16, 1986 to Curro et al., and 4,609,518, issued Sep. 2, 1986 to Curro et al.
Another solution has been to utilize a fibrous material as a covering or topsheet on such articles, alone or as an overlay or laminate over other materials. A representative topsheet structure of this variety is disclosed in Statutory Invention Registration H1670 published in the name of Aziz et al. on Jul. 1, 1997. Such fibrous materials may take the form of a woven or nonwoven web of a suitable fiber variety, and may or may not include discretely formed apertures in addition to the inherent porosity of the web itself. Such fibrous webs exhibit an aesthetically-pleasing, cloth-like surface appearance and tactile impression due to the fibrous nature of the surface.
While fibrous webs tend to have more cloth-like aesthetics than film webs they also tend to retain fluid in the fiber interstices resulting in a wet topsheet versus films. What is needed then is a film-based web that has fibrous web-like aesthetics. The aforementioned Curro et al. patent makes some progress towards this end compared to the aforementioned Radel et al., but does not make a film web nearly as soft as the present invention.